Create memories at school by investing in relationships and building strong teams that work together. As teachers head back into the classrooms it's the perfect time to work on some team building activities at school. From year to year teams change, curriculum and standards change and activities and ideas need to be reworked. As your teams prepare for the upcoming school year help them create some memories with their teammates as they map out the memories their students will make throughout the year.

Start off by brainstorming with your team. Talk about memories made throughout the year. Discuss lesson activities, field trips, book studies and experiences that are unique to your grade level. Write ideas down onto colorful star cutouts. This discussion time is key, listening to new teammates, learning from experiences and bringing new engaging ideas to the team is how your school will begin to grow and change.

Once you have a few ideas of activities and skills you will be accomplishing this year now you can begin to design your banner. As a team you want each person to contribute in some way, so we came up with one and done...each team member adds one item to the banner. This helps to represent all ideas fairly and also ensures each team member is contributing. Just grab your fabric banner and colorful fabric markers and get started.

The fabric markers work well to add vivid colors to your banner. We had our teams all add their grade level in the center so it would be easy to distinguish what banner belonged to what team. Each group added their ideas to their banners. From special field trips to specific skills learned in that grade each banner was unique and different.

Now your team banners are all done! They are ready to hang and display. Before we hung them up each team highlighted some of the fun memories their students will look forward to this upcoming school year. Hang your banners throughout the school or on a bulletin board like this camp-themed one. We can't wait to start making memories with our students this year! What new memories will you make?